Much like isolated ships having trouble accessing key components on the high seas, forward Army bases often find themselves weeks away from their supply chains.

Recently, a shortage of parts was delaying delivery of Harris radios. The radios required the installation of small dust caps prior to shipping to the customer. Finding and getting the part from a vendor could have taken weeks; so instead, Mechanical Engineer Eugene Haikes designed a 3-D model of the part and the depot printed 600 dust caps in 16 hours.

“If the depot wanted to produce the dust caps but didn’t have a rubber mold for them, we could have expected to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 for the mold,” said Mead. “Because Eugene was able to come up with the model, we were able to produce the caps for only a dollar apiece while trimming days, if not weeks, off of our anticipated delivery date.”

Just like the Navy, advantages don’t stop there, as 3D printing can create objects too complicated for traditional machining and casting processes.

Eric Moger lost half of his face to cancer and as a result could no longer eat, drink or speak. Doctors scanned his face and mirrored the “good” side over the “bad.” The result is a model of the face very similar to how it used to look. From that the team of doctors was able to develop a prosthesis that allows the patient use of his mouth again.

For the first time in five years, Eric Moger is able to speak clearly without holding his mouth, eat without a feeding tube, and hold his head high while going to the pub with his friends.

In the words of Mr. Moger, himself, “It is a great feeling to look in the mirror and see a whole face again. I am amazed at what they have done – it just looks so like me. I also have something to look forward to, as Karen and I are planning to finally get married this summer.’

Highlighted advantages include making complicated hulls with complex internal geometries in one fell swoop, as well as having print manufacturing on board vessels to deliver on demand replacement parts.

In addition to our speaking engagement at this year’s Northwest Machine Tool Expo (Oregon Convention Center – 777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. Portland OR), RapidMade picked up booth 744 at the last minute! Please come visit us at the show. We will have all the latest samples of Additive Manufacturing, 3D Printing, and 3D scanners in the booth.

RapidMade, Inc. proudly invites you to attend a one hour seminar on 3D printing next Wednesday at the Northwest Machine Tool Expo starting at 9:30 AM. Admission to the expo and seminars is completely free and the event takes place at the Oregon Convention Center (777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd., Portland OR.)

Thanks to FDA approval of the process just last February 18th, Oxford Performance Materials replaced 75% of a patient’s skull using a 3D printed replica as an implant.

They were able to take a digital scan of the patient’s skull and turn it into a 3D plastic part. This plastic was printed so that the edges had very high porous detail, allowing for the bones to grow into and fuse to the plastic. This allows for lower chance of rejection and an overall stronger new skull than traditional implants.

The plastic is a high performance medical grade polyetherketoneketone (PEKK) developed by Oxford Performance Materials for the EOS P800, a plastic selective laser sintering (SLS) machine. Selective laser sintering fuses layers of thermoplastics together using an extremely precise laser.

Immediately, the company envisions that 300 to 500 patients could use this implant every month in the United States alone.

But don’t just stop at skulls. OPM’s president, Scott DeFelice says, “If you can replace a bony void in someone’s head next to the brain, you have a pretty good platform for filling bony voids elsewhere.”

The company is submitting for FDA approval of bone implants for many other parts of the body. Each individual bone, including the skull, could be between a 50 and 100 million dollar market.

In Formula 1, the driver gets the credit for winning the race even though the win was a massive team effort between engineers, mechanics, lab technicians, researchers, and scientists. Technology has a similar effect on “pure” sports like track and field or football, from new understandings of the body helping develop better diets and training regimens to new swimsuit materials being so advantageous in reducing drag in the water that they are banned from competition.

In a similar way, 3D Printing can help shape the future of athletic footwear for a number of reasons:

1: Dynamic Material Designs – Imagine a shoe sole made up entirely of thousands and thousands of micro-springs. Even if the original material were rigid with little impact absorption, complex micro-structures could give new properties to that material. For instance, if impact from running or jumping could be reduced right at the point of contact, it could decrease wear and tear on the athlete’s joints, muscles, and bones.

2: Lightweight Lattice Structures – An 1/8th ounce of weight reduction in the athlete’s gear could mean a 1/100th of a second cut in finish time. That could mean the difference between first and fifth place. 3D Printing allows for material only to exist where it is structurally necessary, eliminating all extraneous material on the shoe meaning that they are as light as possible.

3: Biologically Optimized, Custom Designs – 3D printing means better economies of scale for “one-off” production. Couple that with the ability to 3D scan the body and create custom fits right to that organic shape and we have a technology that can make optimal shoes for any athlete. Not only can they be produced for best fit to maximize ground contact and traction for athletes, but custom cleat spikes can be placed in any location, with any shape or size to fit that athlete’s preference. Athletes could have an arsenal of custom shoes optimized for them and the conditions of a particular competition (dirt vs. grass, wet vs. dry).

This is not speculation. As I write this, Nike and New Balance are some of the first pioneers to announce the amazing shoes are producing thanks to 3D printing to advance athletic competition. They use Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) to make custom nylon soles for their athletes. Click the following to read about Nike and New Balance and their 3D printing endeavors.

Like this:

iRobot has just filed a patent for the next step in 3D printing. They are trying to offset one of the biggest problems with the technology, automated machine level finishing. Though high end additive manufacturing machines can be quite accurate, they cannot hit the sub .001” tolerance that many mills can. On top of that, most processes cannot make smooth surfaces like bearing holes or tap threads.

This patent is interesting because companies like Matsura have already created machines like this, and are much further along with prototypes rather than just the idea. Also, iRobot is forbidden to use any technology but plastic filament extrusion, generally a lower quality printing process, with it’s machine because of other industry patents.

Still, it is an interesting and necessary idea because one must merge additive manufacturing and traditional manufacturing to expand the range of applications and industries, and as other manufacturers strive to make easy all-in-one machines, they will likely butt heads with this patent.

We as a company do post machining all the time, manually. It is generally not a big deal or too costly, but it would be nice for machine we use to do all the post processing automatically.

I have not checked out the accuracy of a scanner like this, but compared to the multiple thousand dollar price point of most 3D scanners out there, this could make many more reverse engineer-to-print jobs economical where upfront scanning costs ruined the profitability of the product.

Click here to read more about the 3D laser scanner with the 10”x10”x4” scan volume and only requires a tripod and lazy susan.

Though not an original equipment manufacturer, NASA has been one of the foremost innovators for 3D printing design and application. Using Selective Laser Sintering or SLS on metals NASA is able to more quickly make more optimally designed and mechanically robust components, while cutting out the majority of the weight. They feel that their, “team’s innovative work here at Marshall and the NASA National Center for Advanced Manufacturing is just one example of how NASA is helping to reinvigorate America’s manufacturing sector.”

The goal is for these parts to help us reach a familiar goal:

The emerging technology will build parts for America’s next flagship rocket, the Space Launch System or SLS, which is designed to take humans, equipment and experiments beyond low Earth orbit to nearby asteroids and eventually to Mars.

The main reasons NASA sees an advantage in Additive Manufacturing are pretty simple:

There are two major benefits to this process, which are major considerations for the Space Launch System Program: savings and safety.

“This process significantly reduces the manufacturing time required to produce parts from months to weeks or even days in some cases,” said Andy Hardin, the integration hardware lead for the Engines Office in SLS. “It’s a significant improvement in affordability, saving both time and money. Also, since we’re not welding parts together, the parts are structurally stronger and more reliable, which creates an overall safer vehicle.” It turns out these 3D printed parts can handle more stress from the launch than any other welded part.